Posts published in October 2025

Delegates re-elected Mark Hancock as National President and Candace Rennick as National Secretary-Treasurer at National Convention on Wednesday.

For Hancock, first elected in 2015, this marks a sixth straight mandate. “It’s been the honour of my life and a hell of a ride to lead our great union. I’m grateful to our members for their confidence and their support,” said Hancock. “We’re going to keep fighting to build communities where we take care of one another, and to elect governments that put public interest before private profit.”

Rennick, first elected in 2021, begins her third term as National Secretary-Treasurer. “I draw strength and inspiration from our amazing members who work so hard, day in and day out, and I am incredibly grateful for their support,” she said. “Working with them and for them is truly one of the great honours of my life. They are the reason I show up every day and keep fighting.”

Together, Hancock and Rennick will continue to lead CUPE’s 800,000 members with the same energy and commitment that have defined their leadership as they champion workers’ rights and build a stronger, more just Canada.

A short-sighted decision to close the Saint Mary’s University language centre is inflicting long-term harm on members of CUPE 3912 and the international students they supported. Management at the Halifax-area university waged a campaign of cuts and neglect before abruptly shutting down the centre in 2024.

The centre provided a language bridging program where international students could study English in order to start academic programs at Saint Mary’s University (SMU). Instructors provided English language training as well as courses on academic communication, critical thinking, and research methods and standards.

Highly trained language instructors with decades of experience helped international students adapt to a different culture as they adjusted to campus life.

Replacing workers with an app

Management laid off the centre’s 22 instructors in the middle of a teaching day, while the local was in bargaining. CUPE 3912 president and language instructor Lauren McKenzie later learned that SMU would use Duolingo, an artificial intelligence (AI) language training app, for crucial language training and testing.

McKenzie is clear that Duolingo may have a role in education, but it is no substitute for a highly trained educator who understands the connections between language and culture, and can respond to a learner’s needs.

“AI is amazing, but it does not bring that exchange,” says McKenzie. “That is human-powered.”

Closure a major blow to students and workers

The language school closure is a major blow to international students and CUPE members. “We are all cast out now,” says McKenzie. “We don’t have CUPE work anymore. Our section has been dissolved.”

McKenzie says the laid off instructors are either out of work or working in private language schools for half the pay and no benefits. CUPE 3912 filed a grievance and was able to negotiate a package for affected members.

The local represents more than 5,000 workers in five bargaining units at four Halifax universities. Language instruction has also been cut back or eliminated at Dalhousie University and Mount Saint Vincent University. “We’re all precarious workers,” says McKenzie.

Exploiting international students

Over the years, McKenzie has seen SMU cut other services for international students like visa support, while exploiting them by charging high tuition fees.

Sarom Rho, coordinator of the international student section of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, agrees. “What we’re seeing is that these educational institutions are using these kinds of language programs as ways to recruit international students, charge a lot of money, which then goes to subsidizing public education,” Rho says.

“When they operate with the objective of supporting international students with language, which is such an essential tool that we use to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of homemaking, a sense of connection, then I think these programs are very good,” Rho adds.

Unfortunately, in recent years, contradictions have emerged with universities attempting to extract the maximum profit from international students while deteriorating programming.

International students have always been marginalized on university campuses, according to McKenzie. She has seen students denied university services like a gym membership or a bus pass, despite being full-time language centre students.

“It’s the ultimate corporatized university: treating workers as disposable and the students as the income unit,” she says.

The latest cut leaves McKenzie questioning how international students will access education at SMU. “They can get in, but how can they stay? It’s just throwing them to the wolves,” she adds.

Rho also states that language is a key component of the current points-based immigration system. International students need a very high score in order to qualify for the federally-managed immigration program. Language programs like SMU’s supported students in meeting these requirements.

Cuts on university campuses

SMU is not the only post-secondary institution to lose language programming for international students. The University of Saskatchewan, Simon Fraser University and the University of Winnipeg have all closed English language programs. George Brown College also announced it was ending its English for Academic Purposes course in 2026, a program that had been in place since 1969.

These closures are in part a response to the federal government’s decision to slash the number of study permits for international students after elected leaders and right-wing pundits unfairly blamed immigration and international students for the housing crisis. They were looking for a scapegoat rather than taking responsibility.

Language centre closures are just one part of a vast array of cuts to post-secondary education programs and services. Academic programs have closed, as well as counselling services and programs addressing gender-based violence. All of this occurs in the context of decades of government underfunding of post-secondary education in Canada. In the 1980s, the provincial and federal governments contributed 80% of total funding for colleges and universities. Today, they contribute barely 50%.

Organizing for the fights to come

These program cuts are happening alongside the most significant rollback to migrant rights in Canadian history. Over 200,000 post-graduate work permits for international students are set to expire by the end of 2025, and this will leave countless graduated students stranded, many of whom have already applied for permanent residency. These measures come in addition to broader changes affecting migrant workers, international students and refugees.

Workers are also affected by the rollbacks, and like other employers, post-secondary employers are using these immigration changes to fire CUPE members who are migrant workers. CUPE has been working with allies to protect and defend our members. Last year, our union launched a guide to support members who are temporary foreign workers. CUPE has been working with the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change to get the federal government to renew post-graduate work permits.  

Rho points to the interconnections between our struggles: “Migrants are exploited, migrants are also fighting back against these types of systems, and so are unions.”

As for CUPE 3912, the local recently won a victory that will give workers a say in future decisions affecting members and students. Part-time faculty had fought for years for a seat on the Saint Mary’s University Senate. In May 2025, senators amended their bylaws to let part-time faculty run for a Senate seat, and vote for their own representative. CUPE 3912 is mounting similar challenges to university governance at the other universities where its members work. This will give the union more power to protect workers and students in the fights ahead.

CUPE’s biannual Health and Safety Forum brought together activists and members to focus on building healthier, safer workplaces with a special emphasis on psychological health and mental well-being.

The forum opened with an announcement that 2026 will be CUPE’s Year of Health and Safety, sending a strong signal of how important this issue is for members. National coordinator Troy Winters unveiled plans for new initiatives, campaigns, and opportunities for member engagement throughout the year ahead. 

The highlight of the forum was the launch of CUPE’s new, comprehensive mental health toolkit, a resource designed to help locals address psychological health and safety on the job. The toolkit includes model bargaining language, strategies to reduce stigma, and practical tools for health and safety activists to tackle the root causes of workplace stress and other psychosocial hazards.

“We want psychologically safe workplaces, but employers take an individualized approach. They want to talk about individual’s mental health and challenges, they want workers to build resilience,” said CUPE health and safety representative Paul Sylvestre. “But at some point, workers stop bending and start to break no matter how much resiliency they’ve built.”

The message from the forum was clear: mental health is a workplace issue and it takes more than an individual approach. CUPE’s toolkit is based on a psychosocial understanding of workplace mental health where members are equipped to identify and eliminate hazards to improve working conditions for all.

“Individual toughness to handle unsafe conditions should never be the focus,” said Sylvestre.

For more information about CUPE’s mental health toolkit or the Year of Health and Safety initiatives, contact your local health and safety committee or visit CUPE’s website.

In a world sliding towards authoritarianism, United States labour leader Lee Saunders offered CUPE delegates an impassioned vision, clear direction, and reason for hope. When democracy is under siege, the president of the 1.4 million member strong American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) declared, the answer lies not in despair but in organizing—together.

U.S. workers face a regime that would rather shut down their federal government than give up tax cuts for billionaires, he said. But that threat is not limited to the U.S. It’s part of a global rise of totalitarianism that has reared its head in the UK, Canada, and countries on every continent.

“If it can happen in the U.S., it can happen anywhere,” he warned.

The outrage among CUPE members was palpable and members were on their feet when Saunders raised Trump’s threat to annex Canada.

“That’s so much bullshit, I cannot tell you,” he shouted to the crowd.

But there is a path forward: “It is us,” he said.

Saunders highlighted a speech Martin Luther King delivered to striking sanitation workers in Memphis the night before his assassination.

“Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars,” he quoted King.

“These are dark enough times,” said Saunders,” but we are not lost because we can see our North Star: Organizing. All of us collectively must organize, organize, organize!”

AFSCME is running a “Get Organized” campaign to defend freedoms, grow, and build their power, he said. Through one-on-one conversations and organizing, they are “growing an army of grassroots activists” to win back government in elections next year.

“We cannot do this work without an international call to action,” he said. “Around the world, stand up and say, ‘We will not take this shit anymore!’ When we stand together and fight together, we win!”

And two thousand CUPE members stood.

Fighting racism builds solidarity, and today delegates heard how we’re strengthening our union with CUPE’s Anti-Racism Strategy.

“If we allow racism to exist in our workplace, our union, or our community, we will face our enemies divided and weakened,” said Debra Merrier, CUPE Diversity Vice President representing Indigenous workers.

Merrier and Aubrey Gonsalves, CUPE Diversity Vice President representing Black and racialized workers, shared CUPE’s progress towards the strategy’s 10 goals and outlined the work ahead.

CUPE’s Anti-Racism Strategy, adopted in 2021, is grounded in the idea that all members have a role to play fighting racism and building a union that includes and values everyone.

“CUPE’s solidarity comes from standing with communities and other unions. By putting the anti-racism strategy into practice, we keep building that solidarity,” said Gonsalves.

“This is about more than policies,” said CUPE National President Mark Hancock as he introduced Merrier and Gonsalves. “It’s about action. It’s about transformation. And it’s about building a truly inclusive and powerful union—one where every member feels seen, heard, and valued.” 

Read CUPE’s Anti-Racism Strategy and learn how you can help put it into action.

Read the full report to convention.